1: a brief pause
2: background office noise
3: "Oh, good morning, Dave, this is X X from IBDG, can I just confirm I'm speaking to Mr Dave Bull?"
The question is designed to make you say Yes - a standard sales technique that I myself teach in sales training. Teaching it makes me very aware when it's being used on me. Its purpose is to set up a psychological trend in your brain so that when he asks you to buy you'll still be in Yes mode.
Like you, I feel really really resentful if I think I'm being manipulated. So instead of answering I ask him what IBDG stands for - International Business Development Group. Hm.
He tells me they are consultants and he's working with the training managers and directors of the top 450 companies in the UK and asks if that would be a good target audience for me. Another Yes question. My response: "Are you telling me, X, that you are consulting with 450
training managers?" He backs down - first to say that that's between his whole team, then: "Put it this way, we only deal with companies that are in the top 450." Well, that could be just one company, but to be fair their website says they work with "over 150 top companies." Glad that's consistent then!
Finally he tells me what they do - they ask these managers what training needs they have, then match them up with "very carefully pre-vetted specialist consultants" at a kind of "dating seminar" and the managers can decide whether to engage you or not. More Yes questions follow, forcing me to call him: "So where does IBDG fit in, what do you get out of it?"
No straight answer at first, lots of waffle about packages and return on investment, followed by the bombshell: their smallest package (a two-person package - despite telling me that these training managers were specifically asking for independent consultants) is...
...a five-figure sum annual membership.
I laughed out loud at him, which he obviously didn't like because he then asked me if that was "a little out of my league".
Sales lesson No 1 - insulting your prospect is a fantastic idea if you love making phone calls but hate closing sales.
I apologise for laughing and advise him to move on to the next name on his list, but he tries to recover himself - more questions, more justifications. Too late. I repeat that he's wasting time on me and needs to move on. He puts the phone down on me. No goodbye. Rude.
Checking the company out they seem to be reputable enough - they complete their accounts and returns on time, for a small company. They've been registered for a few years, their registered office is on an industrial estate in Milton Keynes, not in someone's bedroom in their mum's house.
But the very business model is suspect - why would I pay the salary of a telemarketer to get into 17 "beauty parades" a year? Why would they build their package around a single upfront fee, when they could earn more than they asked me for with a percentage commission? I can only assume that it's because they don't really believe they can actually get me the business.
===
Now I have to apologise to you too - I don't usually use this blog to have a rant! Here are some of the lessons, please comment if I've missed anything else.
- Obviously scripted calls put people off. Obviously scripted pep talks and appraisal meetings are exactly the same. We can only truly get people's buy-in and co-operation by connecting with them and if you're reading a script you're not connecting to the person. Be yourself, tell your team (or your prospect) about your vision, your hopes, your dreams for the the team and what you see as its potential.
- Share risk - if you're telling me you can win me business then I will only believe you if you're willing to share in that reward and risk - I'll give a commission to anyone who comes to me with a customer I haven't already got - and do the same with your teams: you can reduce conflict by sharing risk and reward. Make your production department and your Quality department share in one reward rather than setting them up against each other.
- It's awfully easy to put people down - if you watch TV or films you'll see it happen all the time, and unconsciously we pick up these patterns of interaction all over the place. I don't imagine for a second he intended to insult me with "out of your league", but he did. An open question like "What was it that made you laugh, Mr Bull?" would have got him further.
- Get your story straight. If you have to backpedal on statistics within your first minute of a conversation, you've lost all credibility.
All the best,
Dave Bull
Team Coaching Network Ltd - http://www.teamcoachingnetwork.com
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